MB Tutorial Part 61: Rigging Hand with Sliders I Video Lecture | A Complete Course: Motion Builder - Professional Skills

in this video we're going to take a look
at creating a custom hand rig for a
character using the new custom
properties feature inside of
MotionBuilder 6 essentially we're going
to be creating a list of sliders that we
can use to control individual finger
movement rather than having to grab an
FK effector and rotate it or an ik
effector and translate it around that's
right in the end this is going to
greatly speed up an animator when it
comes to animating a character's hand
exactly it's going to facilitate a much
easier workflow now before we get
started there are some things that we
need to get out of the way this rig is
going to be broken up over several
different videos that's right you guys
are going to find that there's a lot of
steps involved in getting the rig put
together now of course once it's put
together the the awards are the rewards
are great absolutely but um but getting
to that point right you know it's a lot
of steps involved right so if we put all
these steps in one video then it'd be
very easy to lose focus now these are
broke up into easy-to-follow steps so
what we're going to do is we're going to
split it up into five different videos
that's number one number two we are not
going to do both hands right only one I
mean you know you want to do the other
hand you just simply rewatch the video
substitute the word left for ride and
you're good to go you're good to go and
finally we're not going to create every
possible slider combination for
controlling every combination of right
gestures that you can think that there's
a lot of gestures I could I could think
of but so if you're watching the video
at some point anything you know they
didn't add the the thumb wiggle slider
whatever my finger been back or whatever
yeah anything just so we're gonna have
shown you guys enough that you will
without a doubt have a problem no
problem at all following along or Creek
excuse me creating your own absolutely
so we're gonna get you started right so
uh to get started let's go ahead and
bring a character into the scene
commence kind of important that you have
a character for it would be a nice solid
place an entire course sac has this
thing for me yes oh here she comes I
have a crush on her yes I'm sorry again
we all know okay so uh we'll go ahead
and frame up on her wrist effector I'm
going to be placing all of my finger
controls here on the wrist effector
because this is going to be the primary
effector forehand and
animation and it'd be nice to have all
of my custom property centralized right
Quentin animators animating our
characters armed that's basically what
they grabbed most of the time exactly
and many of the rigs that I've built in
the past in several different
applications all of the finger controls
are located we're just centralizing all
of them so basically all of the left
finger controls would go on the left
wrist effector and all the right we go
on the right wrist effect there you go
so uh there also are some things I don't
need to see here in the view so we'll go
under show and I'll switch off the
skeleton and I'll switch off floor
contacts as well we don't need them and
let's go ahead and begin by adding in
our custom attributes which would be the
primary focus of this video in our
series so I'll go under properties and
we'll click customize and of course
here's where i can add all of my custom
properties now what properties are we
going to need we need individual curling
ability for each finger so index middle
ring pinky and thumb I'd like to add the
ability to swivel the thumb left and
right say if you like you're playing
your favorite video game console I would
like a single slider that will curl all
four of the fingers simultaneously so
finger spread as well well we're going
to get you I'd like to add finger spread
so I can spread all the fingers apart
and pull them together too and then
chrome and then curl just in any order
you like it's all good and really that's
about it for the control but I would
also like a slider to enable these
sliders all at once right because what
I'm going to be doing with the sliders
essentially is grabbing the FK effectors
so with it basically you'd be able to
blend back to ik then that's right and
it would be nice to have a single slider
that would blend the whole hand all five
of the fingers or all four fingers in
the thump between FK and ik rather than
having to grab an individual finger and
grab my reach translate and reach rotate
and move those myself yeah that would be
cool so we're going to have several
different sliders now to get started of
course I've already got my custom
properties window open I'm going to be
adding a real now the order in which you
create these is going to be important
you want to keep things nice and flowing
so the first attribute I will creator
the first property I'll create will be
slider and able and i'll leave this ad 0
to 100 because going to be a percentage
value now we'll press
enter here and you'll see slider enable
pop right up now add another real and
this will be my index curl property so I
get to show off my awesome typing skills
do you like that hey guys index curl I'm
gonna give this just for simplicity sake
a minimum of 0 and a maximum of 90
degrees of rotation and where'd you come
up with a 94 just a 90-degree angle on a
right angle that doesn't mean in the end
that we're limited to that absolutely
not you can put a multiplier on any one
knuckle if you needed to rotate more or
less right multiplier don't worry guys
that's coming up we get into the exactly
don't worry about it basically you can
take the value and multiply it by a
factor okay give it 1.2 times
multiplication for the rotation so
you're rotating a little more zero not
last a good base starting point I like
to use it as a base and from there on we
can really make it any into anything
absolutely so with index curl selected
I'll just hit the duplicate button down
here so it duplicates my property notice
I have index curl one with the same min
and max values so I will just change
this to middle curl and I'll make sure
middle curl is selected and hit
duplicate will switch down the middle
curl one and we'll name this ring curl
and we'll hit duplicate and switch down
to ring curl one and of course this is
going to be pinkie curl duplicate again
and we will have our thumb curl
attribute very fast creation of
properties now from here I want thumb
swivel and I'm going to change my values
here I'm going to go to a negative 20
degrees so kind of rotate my thumb a
little bit higher than my palm if you
were to hold your hand flat out in front
of you with the palm down and pull your
thumb up into the air as high as you can
we'll call that about 20 degrees and
then pushing it down we'll call that a
positive 60 and of course we can come
back if we want we can even change the
values of the sliders if we feel we need
to this is all very customizable so I
recommend if you've never done this
before just throw in some some arbitrary
values or use the values that I've
suggested here and then if you find you
need more or less rotation come back and
change the values first then start
adding multipliers in your expressions
which we'll talk
later that's right so with a thumb
swivel in place I'll go ahead and add a
finger spread attribute so uh I'll just
add a new reel for this will come down
and select it and we'll call this finger
spread now I'm going to add again what's
going to look like an arbitrary value
here that I'm getting mostly because
I've done this a few times before again
I stress that if you need to make tweaks
you can always change the values of
these numbers later we'll go from a
value of negative 8 degrees of rotation
to positive 30 again hold your hand out
in front of you palm facing get more and
have your hand relaxed and you'll notice
your fingers by default or not together
they're depart just the default setting
default setting of the human panda
that's right so you can pull your
fingers together but you get that and
that's not interesting less than if you
were to take your fingers and spread
them all out right is why I love no
rotation point we've got a small
negative number for the minimum value
exactly so that's going to be just about
everything we need there is one more
attribute that I'd like so I'll add a
new reel and will say all fingers curl I
would like a slider that will rotate all
four fingers simultaneously not
including the thumb so we'll call this
all fingers curl and will also give this
a 0 to 90 just like the fingers
themselves so this will be all of the
properties that I need we can go ahead
and close this at this time and really
that's everything that I wanted to cover
just in this particular part of the
video we have all of our sliders in
place of course right now they don't do
anything in the next video we're going
to be hooking these up using an
expressions constraint so that's going
to wrap it up for this video thanks a
lot